Hi there,
I’m very interested in the Libelium Smart City/Environment sensors (Air Quality, Particle Matter, etc).
However, they are extremely expensive, especially if a City needs more of them it’s a high entry barrier.
Does anyone know any good alternatives, preferrably calibrated sensors?
Thank you,
Christoph
how many sensors do you need, what should be the resolution,what do you want to meassure exactly and what would be the max you (?} would want to pay for them ?
Also do you need certified (FCC/CE/ETSI/RED/IC/UR etc - depends where in the world) production products (if not why not given use case and are you sure devices are socially friendly - spurious emissions, duty-cycle regulated etc.), do you need warranty, do you need tech support, etc. All costs… 
(Not defending Libelium or any other vendor as no association but commercial realities are a factor…)
How much work/config/prog do you want to do yourself (or with others)…maker option vs buy in etc…
Of course, I know all these points. It’s for production use (city context), so yes CE certification etc.
I just wanted to get an overview of alternatives, I’m not criticizing Libelium for their pricing.
I think your forum post is a reasonable question.
For particulate matter air quality readings, planttower sensors are pretty cheap, but require integration to a lora transceiver unit. See this forum post for more discussion on this technology.
See the MySense Open Source software https://github.com/teusH/MySense . There is documentation and software assembled for Air Qual sensors (Dylos, Shiney, Nova, Plantower), different meteo sensors (DHT, Bosch), gas sensors (Alpha, Spec) and GPS. There are two tracks: based on (Lan/Wifi/GPRS) Raspberry Pi and LoRa TTN (Lopy/PyCom and Marvin). Marvin has limited range. A fully equipped Pi based is about 500-750 euro hardware, the Lopy (Plantower,BME680,GPS) is about 75-100 euro on hardware costs (Ali Express). See for info http://behouddeparel.nl/samen-meten (dutch). There are some other initiatives but they are based on Arduino/ESP hardware and not LoRa TTN.
That’s an interesting project, thanks for the link!
Unfortunately in the City context we need complete - i.e. production ready - solutions with certificate, etc.
Otherwise it’s difficult to convince the stakeholders…
We had 10 PMS7003 in use. After a year all are dead (only null readings). No we use the PMSx003 (4X in costs) which run ok so far but only 3 months in use. So we focus now on the Sensirion SPS30 which has more functionalities as eg cleaning the fan. Till now (4 months test) it runs ok with the help of a 3-D in-/outlet air box covering the sensor to separate in- and outlet. SDS011 is also a good sensor but has very limited data as output and only gives values in ug/m3, which is debatable for outdoor applications and calibration.
Very curious if you find a ‘certified’ solution provider. This type of sensors is in development. Mostly from citizen science air quality initiatives working together with local government and ‘nearby’ university research groups. We have been in contact with only a very few ‘manufacturers’ who based there products on the initiatives but newer sensors which are far more better for outdoor use are coming up and are not in the manufacturer stream. Besides that the market is not there yet so production wise it is not wise to jump in yet for any manufacturer. Just an oipinion. So the stakeholders should be a bit more cooperative in this development phase. We have build now about 50 kits so the engineering phase is probably closed…
I use the BME680, amazing how it works, delivers temp, atmospheric pressure, IAQ and humidity.